Eighty-Seven

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
October 9, 2012

He made it as far as the front lawn before he was stopped.

“Going somewhere, Cartero?” Hector called to him from across the grass, sun creeping up out of the ocean to cast soft gray light between them. Estefan was with him, along with a few of Reyes’s more experienced guards.

Michael—headed for the steep, winding switchback that led down the cliff wall and onto the boat dock—stopped in his tracks. “Yeah. Home.”

Hector nodded, smiling. “Home will have to wait. There’s a matter Hefe would like to discuss with you.”

So far Estefan hadn’t said a word. The stitches that must’ve held his face together had been removed to reveal a thick, ugly scar that ran the length of his face, from the corner of his eye to his mouth. Now he smiled, pushing the scar upward until it crinkled and bunched against his skin. “I told you, didn’t I, Cartero? I told you that you’d pay.”

He shifted his duffle, rolling it from one hand to the other so that he could have quick access to his gun. The switchback was a good fifty yards away. He wouldn’t make it. Not without killing these two fucks first. “Is that what you were saying?” He chuckled to mask the mounting desperation he could feel heaping on his chest. “To tell the truth, I couldn’t really understand you, what with all that blubbering and crying you were doing.”

Estefan flushed, a deep red wash that paled his scar in comparison. He took a step forward, but Hector held a restraining arm across his chest. “You will want to look up, Cartero,” Hector said.

Something about his tone turned his neck, had him scaling the walls with his eyes until they settled on a window with pink drapes. They were parted, Christina standing in the bare wedge between them, staring down at him, her face pale with confusion and fear.

A man he didn’t recognize stood behind her. He had a gun in his hand.

“Hefe would like to see you,” Hector repeated his earlier request. “It won’t take long, and then you will be free to go.”

It was a lie and they both knew it, but he nodded anyway, dropping the duffle at his feet. He was going to have to move fast when the time came, and it would only slow him down.

“The gun too,” Estefan said, jerking his chin at the .40 holstered on his hip.

“Sure thing,” he said, lifting it slowly. “But can we hurry this along? I’ve got more pressing matters.” He dropped it in the grass before going palms up.

Hector nodded, lifting his own gun from his hip and using the barrel of it to motion him along. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t take him into the house. Instead they guided him across the lawn, around the corner of the house until Reyes came into view, standing behind a heavily pregnant Lydia. Michael barely spared her a glance, focusing all his attention on the man behind her.

“Cartero, were you going somewhere?” Reyes said in a cheerful cadence that dismissed the gun he had pressed into the space where his wife’s belly rounded away from her hips.

“Yeah,” he said, keeping his tone casual, just tinged with boredom even as the thought of his Aunt Gina’s voice shook him with its broken desperation. “I’ve got some shit to deal with back home. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so …” He flicked a glance at Lydia. Her face was as pale as Christina’s, but there was no confusion. She knew exactly what was happening.

“And then you will return?” Reyes cocked his head.

He could see Christina’s face turned up to look at him, her tiny fingers splayed wide to weave between his own. Are you going to leave too?

He promised her he wouldn’t leave her alone, but Frankie’s disappearance changed everything. Still … “Well, yeah. That was the plan,” he said carefully.

Reyes chuckled, shaking his head. “Why? Why would you return after what you’ve done? Surely you don’t love her.”

The back of his neck went hot and tight—a surefire sign that shit was about to get critical. “What the fuck are you talking about, Reyes?” he said, letting his eyes wonder down to the gun in the other man’s hand. “I really don’t have time for whatever kind of domestic squabble you’ve got—”

“How long?”

He kicked his eyes up to Reyes’s face. “What?”

“How long!” he roared, his face contorted with rage and something else. Something more disturbing than anger. Something fanatical. Almost gleeful. Whatever happened next, there would be no stopping it. No talking Reyes out of whatever choice he’d already made.

“How long what?” He looked at Lydia for help. She knew the answer but all she could do was stare at him, eyes wide and dark, lips moving silently, fumbling over the same words over and over. Let us go, let us go, let us go …

Reyes took a deep breath, letting it out on a soft chuckle as he shook his head. “How long have you been fucking my wife?”

Michael looked at Estefan, who’d moved to flank his father. “I never touched her.”

“My wife is the Virgin Mary, then?” he spat, digging the barrel of his gun into her swollen belly deep enough to cause Lydia to cry out in pain. “The proof is right in front of us both, Cartero. Do you think me a fool?”

There was no reasoning with Reyes. Estefan had been hard at work, tending the lies he’d planted. Even if he did tell him the truth—that it was his son who’d raped his wife, that it was his grandchild and not some bastard that grew in Lydia’s belly—Reyes would never listen. His own conceit would never let him believe that he had been so thoroughly deceived.

“What do you want me to do?” he said, speaking directly to Lydia, eyes trained on her face. “Tell me what to do.”

“What you promised,” she breathed, seconds before her husband pulled the trigger.

Everything stopped. The world ground to a halt as he watched her fall, the bright splash of blood across her belly growing even as she fell to the ground. He screamed, the feel of it, raw and clawing at his throat, was real even though there was no sound.

Reyes leveled the gun at her, pulling the trigger again and again, and Michael lunged forward. There was too much space between them for him to stop what was happening, but he had to try.

Bullets smacked into the ground all around him, hitting him in the shoulder, grazing his rib cage.

Let us go.

He changed direction, heavy boots tearing into the grass as he ran, bullets swarming him like wasps. The retaining wall was low here, so as not to obstruct the view of the ocean from Reyes’s study, and he leapt at it, hands gripping the top to pull himself over.

The ledge between the face of the cliff and the wall was negligible, mere inches, but it didn’t matter. His feet barely touched it as he flung himself over and into the sea.